We begin today’s roundup with Michelle Cottle’s piece in The New York Times about new efforts to ban members of Congress from trading stocks and Speaker Pelosi’s opposition to the reform:
House Democrats would do well to work on changing their chief’s [Speaker Pelosi’s] mind. Not just because it is the right thing to do. But also because the party risks being outflanked by Republicans on the issue.
Make no mistake: G.O.P. leaders know a political opening when they see one. Last week, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, said that he would consider limiting or banning stock trading by members if his party wins control of the House in November.
See what he did there?
You can bet this issue will pop up again — and again — as the midterm elections heat up. Democrats need to put themselves in a position to own that debate.
Aída Chávez at The Nation:
John Fetterman, who’s seeking the Democratic nomination for Senate in Pennsylvania in one of the highest-profile races of 2022, is among the candidates calling for an outright stock ban. “Allowing members of Congress and their spouses to trade stocks is a clear conflict of interest,” Fetterman said in a statement. “Lawmakers should not be making profits off of the same companies they are supposed to be regulating, based on closed-door information that isn’t available to the public.”
Here is Paul Walman’s analysis at The Washington Post on tensions within the Democratic Party:
But you can understand their frustration. The House has done its job for the past year, passing one piece after another of the Democratic agenda, only to watch the bills die in the Senate. Perhaps it’s a tribute to a few members’ faith in the wisdom of the voters that they believe that if the public sees them trying hard to accomplish worthwhile things, they might be rewarded.
Here’s the political dilemma they find themselves in: Although tackling difficult problems and passing legislation won’t ever guarantee victory for a party, not doing so almost certainly guarantees defeat. Delivering for the voters is the necessary but not sufficient condition for success.
Ronald Brownstein at CNN on how Senators Sinema and Manchin are empowering Republicans in their undemocratic agenda:
Voting rights is the most dramatic example of how the axis of Republican-controlled state governments, the GOP-appointed majority on the Supreme Court and filibusters mounted by Senate Republicans is limiting Democrats' ability to set the national agenda, even as they hold unified control of the White House, House and Senate for the first time since 2010. The same combination threatens to roll back other civil rights and liberties, most prominently the nationwide right to abortion, which has prevailed since the
Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, but also including transgender rights and the First Amendment rights of public school teachers over the discussion of race in the classroom.
On a final note, don’t miss Jemele Hill’s piece in The Atlantic about the selfishness of anti-vaccine advocates like tennis star Novak Djokovic:
Djokovic has been a vaccine skeptic from the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, and has never hidden his staunch opposition to vaccine mandates. That an athlete of his fame is using his platform in such a destructive fashion is bad enough; even more despicable is that Djokovic seems so comfortable exploiting his immense privilege to endanger the health and safety of others. It is especially insulting to the Australian people, who have adhered to some of the strictest restrictions during the pandemic in an effort to keep their hospitalizations and death rates low.